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Sunday, November 24, 2024 - 16:59
Sometimes tracking down a key publication can take a bit of work. This one was published in a journal that my local university library doesn't subscribe to, and the isn't in JSTOR (the online portal for academic articles). In the end, I had to temporarily subscribe to the journal to be able to download this one article. (The subject of the journal doesn't have directly to do with gender or sexuality, so it's unlikely that any other content is going to be relevant.) The things I do for my Project!
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Full citation:
Hutchison, Emily & Sara McDougall. 2022. “Pardonable Sodomy: Uncovering Laurence’s Sin and Recovering the Range of the Possible” in Medieval People, vol. 37, pp. 115-146.
This is the most extensive article I’ve found concerning an early 15th century French legal case that is often cited in lists of medieval European evidence for lesbianism. It includes a full translation of the original records (although it doesn’t include the full original text). The article emphasizes interpreting this case in the context of other legal cases with which it shares features, specifically other applications for royal pardon and other records involving sexual offenses, especially those involving same-sex activity.
Here is a brief summary of the events leading to this case. Laurence, the 16-year-old wife of Colin Poictevin was approached by Johanne, the wife of Perrin Goulu while the two were performing agricultural tasks together. Johanne solicited Laurence for a sexual relationship, using somewhat ambiguous language, and the two had several sexual encounters in the following weeks, primarily while working in the fields and vinyards. Laurence is depicted (in her own testimony) as being a “passive” partner, while Johanne’s actions are described in active, masculine terms. When Johanne then approached Laurence at home, at night, when her husband was known to be absent, Laurence indicated unwillingness to continue the relationship, at which Johanne attacked her and wounded her with a knife.
There is no surviving record of what happened to Johanne after that—whether she was prosecuted similarly to Laurence, or fled, or any other possibility. There is no surviving record of what Laurence was charged with. It is reasonable to hypothesize that the charges related in some way to the sexual encounters, since those are the primary topic of the appeal.
The article first reviews prior scholarly treatments of these events, including the angles and interpretations brought to them, beginning in the 18th century. Although legal records of prosecutions for sexual activity were rare, especially for women, this doesn’t automatically imply that such conduct was acceptable. In general, records concerning women in all areas are scarcer than those considering men. But as a general observation, prosecutions for sexual offences overwhelmingly involved men, regardless of the gender of their partner.
The authors emphasize that scholars must be careful to distinguish “between sex acts and sexual or gendered identity,” and hesitate to use either “lesbian” or “lesbian-like” to describe what Johanne and Laurence engaged in. With regard to gender, they note that the evidence indicates that Laurence and Johanne lived as women and identified as women. They were both married to men and presumably had sex with their husbands. The detailed descriptions of the sexual encounters included in the legal record frame sex as involving inherently gendered roles, with Johanne described in terms associated with a masculine role, but that does not mean that she saw herself as having a masculine identity. Rather it meant that the understanding of sex at that time involved a gendered polarity. Indeed, the primary “identity” assigned to both women is that of “wife.”
As noted previously, it is a reasonable assumption that the initial prosecution was due to the sexual activity, although this isn’t stated directly. And because the original crime is not named, we can’t know whether it was categorized as “sodomy” (or under the general rubric “against nature”). Technically, any sexual activity that wasn’t reproductive sex within marriage was equally forbidden and it would be a mistake to apply a framing of heterosexual-vs-homosexual dichotomy to this case.
Johanne was depicted as an active male-coded participant who initiated sex and acted aggressively (even before the knife attack), while Laurence was coded as the passive, compliant female-coded participant. Since we have only Laurence’s version of the narrative, it must be considered that this framing was greatly to her advantage in seeking the pardon. A strategy often seen for female defendants was to lessen culpability by presenting their behavior as following feminine ideals of passivity and subservience.
In the next section of the article, the authors discuss medieval understandings of sexual dynamics and how those interacted with medieval understandings of gender, as well as the rather broad definition of “sodomy” in use at the time, which was not uniquely associatd with same-sex activities as it came to be later.
This is followed by a discussion of the dynamics of royal pardons: the types of cases and defendants that were typically involved, the types of evidence presented, and the reasons for granting or rejecting the appeal (which were not necessarily directly related to the specifics of the offense.) Pardons were rarely sought or received by women, but women were rarely prosecuted for the types of crimes seen in the pardon records, which are primarily among the most serious, usually violent crimes. When sexual crimes appear in pardon petitions, they are usually violent rape or abductions. In this context, Laurence’s appeal is highly unusual, not only for involving a woman, but for involving what could reasonably be considered mostly consensual sex. (Laurence’s testimony does include at least one encounter where she verbally consented, although other encounters could reasonably be interpreted as passive non-protest.)
There are several other axes beyond sexual roles on which Johanne can be seen as the “dominant” member of the pair. She is older than Laurence. She has more economic power, as seen by her ability to offer Laurence employment and gifts. She has more social power, as demonstrated by the pronoun use in the records where Laurence is quoted as addressing Johanne with the formal “vous” while Johanne uses the informal “tu” to Laurence. All these factors helped to frame Laurence as—if not a victim—a less culpable party.
The final confrontation also supports this framing. Rather than taking place in the fields (the archetypal location for illicit sex) during the day (ditto), Johanne enters Laurence’s home at night, disrupting the locus of marriage and licit sex. This is the context in which Laurence refuses Johanne’s advances and tells her that she (Laurence) doesn’t want to continue the relationship. This can be seen as drawing a clear boundary between illicit and licit sex that Laurence refuses to cross, acting as a sign of her repentance.
The next section of the article reviews legal evidence regarding sodomy accusations (primarily men, of course). The word sodomy (or any of its analogs) is never mentioned in the appeal record. There are examples of appeals for pardon for male homosexual acts, where the success aligned somewhat with claims of naivety or ignorance. But pardons were sometimes given for “unforgivable” crimes demonstrate the power of mercy, so it’s difficult to identify clear patterns.
Much is made in Laurence’s pardon appeal of her good standing and reputation in the community, and how she had no other offences on her record. This raises the question whether this was in spite of her relationship with Johanne or whether those who testified for her were ignorant of the events. In any case, Laurence emerged without the taint of scandal (which could be a significant factor in how serious an offense was considered). In fact, the authors suggest that it might have been the scandalous aspects of the physical assault that brought the issue to legal attention, rather than the sexual aspects themselves.
The article concludes with a complete translation of the appeal record, after the pardon was granted. (Although no transcript of the original is provided, a link to images of the original manuscript can be found here: http://himanis.huma-num.fr/app/index.php/ui/show/chancery/319/182.)
Of particular interest are the sexual descriptions.
In the first encounter, Johanne says “Laurence, if you want to be my friend I can do you a lot of good.” Laurence says she wanted that. Then Johanne “took the aforesaid Laurence and threw her on a wheat stack…and…unclothed the aforesaid Laurence and mounted her like a man does on a woman and this Johanne began rubbing her breasts and doing what a man does to his wife such that through the excitement she experienced, she spiller her seed in the said Laurence”.
In the second encounter, Johanne says “I have come to you to talk of love” and then “threw her on the ground and did to her what a man should do to a woman like spilling her seed into the aforesaid Laurence”.
In the third encounter, Johanne has offered Laurence work in the vineyard, for which she gets her husband’s permission. After they’d been working a while Johanne said she wanted to “do this to you” and Laurence said she wanted it, then Johanne “did it to her in a ditch”.
The two women regularly encounter each other on other days while working. On the fourth instance Johanne goes to Laurence’s home at night when her husband is away, finds Laurence in bed with a small child (no indication if it’s her child or if she’s just minding it). This time Laurence says she “didn’t want it and told her she had no further interest in her doing that to her”. Laurence tries to evade Johanne in the bed. Finally Johanne accuses Laurence of having lain with a man since the last time they were together and stabs her in the thigh with a knife.
In the end, the pardon is granted. Laurence’s good name and reputation are returned, and she will not have her goods confiscated. She is not to be further pursued for the case on the condition that she completes 6 months imprisonment form when she was first imprisoned. [Note: It’s unclear whether this is, in effect, “time served.” The pardon is granted in November 1405 and the original events were two years earlier in August, but we don’t know how long the original case took.]
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Tuesday, November 19, 2024 - 20:00
This finishes up Derry with the final chapters and my overall thoughts on the book.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Derry, Caroline. 2020. Lesbianism and the Criminal Law: Three Centuries of Legal Regulation in England and Wales. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-030-35299-8
Chapter 7-9
I realize it seems a bit backwards to attach my overall thoughts on this book to this last post. But I was posting earlier chapters before I'd finished reading the whole book.
Derry follows two main themes in this book. One is simply a chronology and catalog of English legal cases that illustrate the evolution of how English law approached lesbianism (broadly defined). The second is putting forth a thesis that, despite the absence of any laws specifically targeting lesbianism, courts nevertheless took female same-sex relations into account when prosecuting and sentencing women for other offences. And despite this legal awareness, there was a concerted policy and practice of suppressing mention and knowledge of lesbianism, both within the courts and in society in general.
This second aspect is an important point for understanding the relationship of English lesbians to the law. As all marginalized people are quite aware, just because you haven’t done anything illegal doesn’t mean the law can’t touch you if it considers you undesirable. The “benign legal neglect” that Derry works to refute was highly variable depending not only on the specific era, but even more on the social standing and circumstances of the women involved.
But regarding the first theme, I would argue that Derry somewhat overstates the extent to which her work addresses the legal context of “lesbianism” in general, because up until the 20th century examples (which are out of scope for this blog), the legal cases cited cover a very narrow and specific set of “offenses” which are all related to the motif of the “female husband.” That is, legal concern was specifically focused on cases where an assigned-female person was living in society as male, and in that context entered into a marriage or marriage-like arrangement with an assigned-female person living in society as a woman. Further, the legal concern was solely for the person who was transing gender.
Cross-dressing or gender-crossing by itself, though certainly not condoned, was rarely a target of the law in the last three centuries. (Though consider earlier legal cases cited in Benbow & Hawkyard 1994, and in Bennett & McSheffrey 2014.) None of the English cases Derry cites from the 18th and 19th centuries targeted women engaging in sex together with no element of gender passing. I don’t count the Louise Mourey case in Chapter 3 on the basis that the activity falls more in the category of a non-consensual medical exam than sexual activity.
That doesn’t mean that social condemnation of lesbian activity couldn’t have significant consequences. The Pirie & Woods case (which technically is Scottish, where laws were different) involved femme-femme sexual activity, but the legal concern was slander and the charge was brought by the women alleged to be having sex. While there’s some detailed evidence in the case of how the legal establishment worked hard to exclude acknowledgement of lesbianism from the public record, it remains that it’s not a case of women being prosecuted for lesbianism.
The potential non-legal consequences were not trivial. Pirie & Woods lost their livelihood. An unknown number of women in the 19th century were relegated to mental institutions or subject to surgical interventions to address their “condition” and one suspects some might have preferred a simple prison term. But even in those cases, lesbianism as such was not distinguished from other sexual challenges to male supremacy and authority.
To sum up the chronology of Derry’s cases:
- Multiple 18th century cases of “female husbands” being prosecuted, usually for “fraud” (i.e., marrying under false pretenses for financial gain) or more rarely for “vagrancy.” The cases primarily involve economically marginal people. Often (though not always) they initially came to the attention of the law for criminal activity. In this era prosecutions were typically brought by the “victim” and in cases where the wife declined to pursue the case it might be dropped. But there are rare cases where legal authorities pursued a prosecution even with no complainant. The possibility of sexual relations between the couple was a matter of public curiosity (especially in the press) but not an element of the legal charges. Punishment, when applied, was generally whipping or the pillory, but might be mitigated if either the legal authories or the general public considered the defendant sympathetic. Toward the end of the century, press reports began to suppress speculation about sexual aspects of the marriages.
- In the 19th century, mentions of “female husbands” become less common and were of far less legal concern. When gender-passing is mentioned in legal cases, it is treated as a side matter, even when marriage-like relationships are involved. There are no prosecutions of “female husbands” specifically for that status after the 1830s, even though similar relationships are referenced well into the 20th century.
- Women of the middle and upper classes in the 19th century might be victimized by the medicalization of homosexuality, enabled by patriarchal control over their lives, but they were not subject to legal prosecution for lesbian relations.
- The first legal recognition of a crime involving sex acts between women came in 1880 when an age of sexual consent was established and in one case was explicitly applied to non-consensual genital contact by a woman on a female child (though the context was a virginity exam).
It wasn’t until the 20th century that English law began seriously debating (and making movements toward establishing) laws addressing female homosexual behavior.
# # #
Chapter 7- Allen: Sexual Offences Prosecutions in the Late Twentieth Century
[Note: I think I’m succeeding in a briefer, high-level summary for the remaining chapters. These notes may be more random and unconnected.]
The Sexual Offenses Act of 2003 attempted to remove gender differences in laws for sexual offenses, but heteronormative assumptions still resulted in inequalities. In cases, such as “assault by penetration” the Act encouraged prosecutions for activities not previously “visible” to the law, by stipulating for example the inclusion of non-penile penetration in definitions of sexual assault.
An increase in prosecutions for sexual assault by women on women was largely on the basis of age of consent. Although lesbians participated in social activism, their concerns often fell through the cracks between feminism (which focused on heterosexual concerns) and gay liberation (which focused on men). Lesbians were included in the backlash against gay activism without being included in its concerns. Lesbian concerns were more visible in conflicts under family law, including divorce and child custody. Note that even what genuine legal reforms and legal equality for lesbians were achieved, happened only in the 21st-century.
There is a discussion of new social models for lesbianism, including the overlap and ambiguity with trans identities.
Chaper 8 – McNally: After the Sexual Offences Act 2003
This chapter largely presents individual case studies from the 21st-century and suggests future approaches for further legal reform.
Chapter 9 – Conclusion
Derry summarizes the motif of “silencing” and the concern of preventing lesbianism by keeping it out of women’s awareness. Who was the silencing meant to “protect” and who was left outside those defenses?
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Monday, November 18, 2024 - 19:00
One fascinating thing that Derry's study demonstrates is that with respect to the English legal treatment of lesbianism, the situation got steadily worse across the 20th century before it got any better. So much for the illusion of a progressive century!
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Derry, Caroline. 2020. Lesbianism and the Criminal Law: Three Centuries of Legal Regulation in England and Wales. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-030-35299-8
Chapter 6 - The Wolfenden Report: A Shift in Silencing
[Note: it is actually rather hard to do a very condensed overview of these chapters that are of less interest to the Project. I’m trying to get much more high-level for these last few chapters.]
A 1957 committee considered potential changes to the legal treatment of “vices”. One goal of the changes was to keep activities in this category, such as prostitution and homosexuality, out of public view. Even decriminalization was not intended for the benefit of the accused, but to suppress knowledge of the activities.
This process included a shift from addressing “homosexual acts” to concerning itself with homosexual people, though only the former were criminalized, and “homosexual” was tacitly understood as referring only to men. Lesbians, when considered, were treated as analogues to gay men, but with the awareness that lesbian acts were not illegal as such. Even though lesbianism was discussed by the committee, it was deliberately excluded from the conclusions. Even the offense of “indecent assault by a female on a female,” though included in detailed lists of offenses, was omitted from summaries of the resulting laws. The report itself claimed that no case of such an act had been found.
At the same time, girls—far more often than boys—might be detained in institutions for “moral danger,” under which umbrella lesbianism could be silently categorized. The lack of laws against lesbianism, as such, did not mean that women were not prosecuted for being perceived as lesbians.
In general, the tide was shifting to a view that people’s private lives were not the law’s concert. But not all people or activities were considered to fall within the category of “private” for this purpose. Certain sexual activities were still considered to have public consequences and be a public concern (e.g., the category of “moral danger”). To the extent that this shift began decriminalizing sex between men, its purpose was to impose the same silencing and hiding from public awareness that had long been applied to lesbianism. To the extent lesbianism was brought up in deliberations, it was to note the injustice of prosecuting homosexual conduct only for men and not women. The hazard of this line of argument was a growing discussion of penalizing lesbianism, rather than removing penalties from male homosexuality. But the details of these discussions and arguments were largely omitted from the final report. There is a continuing thread in the evidence that lesbianism was not considered of concern because it was functionally invisible. Prior suppression of the visibility and awareness of lesbianism now meant that those debating the laws had little data on which to base arguments.
[Note: we are now moving on into the 40s and 50s.]
Medical models of homosexuality were shifting from a “congenital invert” model to a Freudian psychological one. A psychological approach lead to greater interest in medical “treatments.” [Note: A medical approach did not mean a beneveolent one. Keep in mind that medical “treatment” in this era included lobotomy and chemical castration.]
Situational lesbianism, e.g., during wartime organizations, was a concern, but excused as long as the “right type of women” were involved and their relationships weren’t seen as preventing a return to heterosexuality. Female, military branches needed to address lesbianism because, although not illegal, it was against military discipline. At the same time, there was pressure, not to officially recognize lesbianism as a visible concern. Silence was considered a useful preventive measure—the old “don’t give them ideas” approach. Such practices as sharing beds and displays of physical affection could be dismissed as “normal working-class customs” among women.
In the postwar period, some new archetypes of lesbianism arose. One was the image of lesbians as “marriage breakers,” although hard evidence of prevalence of this phenomenon was scarce. Divorce courts were eager to accept that even same-sex relationships that caused marital discord could be framed as “friendships.” Another archetype was the violent “unnatural friendship” in which “morbid affections” and jealousies led to violence and criminality. Though lesbianism couldn’t be the core of the prosecution, it might be considered as a contributing cause and aggravating factor that led to enhanced penalties.
By the 60s, social visibility was increasingly hard to suppress. The reforms of the 1967 “Sexual Offenses Act”, though superficially more tolerant, actually resulted in increased prosecution. But male and female homosexuals were beginning to make common clause, alongside second wave feminism, and this resulted in the law beginning to address male and female homosexuality in parallel, but often to the detriment of lesbians.
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Sunday, November 17, 2024 - 10:49
I've finished writing up the remainder of this book, so expect the final blogs on it in the next couple days.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Derry, Caroline. 2020. Lesbianism and the Criminal Law: Three Centuries of Legal Regulation in England and Wales. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-030-35299-8
Chapter 5 - Victor/Valerie Barker: Sexology and Challenges to Silencing
By the 1920s, certain sexual offenses between women were criminalized, but not the generic “gross indecency”. “Female husband” disappeared from the record with respect to sexual offenses, but the case of Victor/Valerie Barker signals a new direction of medicalized approaches, combined with anxiety over single women in the wake of World War I and the glimmerings of visibility brought by the obscenity lawsuit over The Well of Loneliness. This was a short-lived visibility ended by a rejection of sexological arguments for acceptance.
After two relationships with men, Valerie Barker left her second, violent partner to live as a man, explaining her motivations later as work-related and for personal safety. She began a relationship with Elfrida Haward, who had been a friend before Barker’s transition. Haward’s parents pressured them to marry and the couple’s stories later diverged, with Haward claiming it was a “normal marriage” and Barker alleging it was a platonic friendship. They separated later, and Barker became the subject of rumors about his sex, as well as being involved in various encounters with the law. In the course of a prison medical exam, Barker’s physical sex was identified, which then led to two charges of perjury relating to how Barker identified himself in legal records. [Note: Compare the “perjury” charge with previous “fraud” approaches for female husbands.]
With respect to the marriage, the prosecutor focused on the fact that it had been performed in church rather than a registry office. [Note: Compare to the charge of “profaning the sacrament” in the case of Anne/Jean-Baptiste Grandjean where the question of sex in the relationship was not brought up.] The judge, who had favored the proposed “female gross indecency” statute, brought the question of sex acts into the case, despite there being no legal context. He created court procedures that prevented Barker’s testimony from being available to the public.
English legal discourse was not significantly influenced by sexology. Legal discourse supported historic views of “female husbands” unproblematically as women, whereas sexology leaned more towards a concept blending lesbianism and trans identities. Sexology promoted a “born this way” view that argued against criminality. That didn’t mean it supported positive acceptance. Sexology had a strong streak of eugenics, which framed appropriate sexual behavior as crucial to the health of the state.
The effects of World War I, the influenza epidemic, and a pre-existing decline in birth-rate sparked concerns about any condition that turned women away from motherhood. This intersection meant that sexological writings by e.g., Havelock Ellis put a focus on the conjunction of lesbianism and criminality, with both aspects of being ascribed to inherent “masculinity,” especially as reflected in physiology.
Women’s social independence (from men) was viewed as inherently leading toward criminality. All of this concern focused only on women seen as “butch”. Sexology viewed butch and femme as entirely separate categories with femme lesbians capable of being “reformed.” [Note that the position that lesbianism and criminality had similar features and causes is different from assigning criminality to the state of being a lesbian, although this may be a rather subtle difference.]
Just as lesbianism was linked to feminism, it could also be linked to other movements considered antisocial, such as miscegenation.
There is a discussion of the broader social impact of sexological theories. Sexology did not have equivalent consequences for men and women. In general, it argued for greater acceptance of male homosexuals while essentially inventing homophobia against female ones.
The publicity around the obscenity trial of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness also helped spread awareness of lesbianism in a specific version (i.e., upper-class “mannish” presentation).
One significant difference between previous female husband cases and some of the prominent cases of lesbianism that intersected with the law in the 1920s is that of class. Female husbands were, in general, working class, while the new generation of “inverts” came from the middle and upper class.
Cases of working class cross-dressing can still be found in legal records of the 1920s, but the cross-dressing is not connected to the offense. When there was no suspicion of lesbianism in the case, judges were willing to state categorically that cross-dressing was not illegal. Even when the popular press framed someone as a female husband, the law carefully avoided bringing that into the public record, with charges typically being the nebulous “breach of the peace.”
With the secularization of marriage, the technical offense that could be brought for a female husband shifted from “fraud” to “perjury.” The “wife” continues to be left out of the legal equation. [Note: successful gender masquerade continues to be quite possible, with failure tending to come from unusual circumstances or personal stupidity.]
Despite the flurry of lesbian visibility in the 1920s, it sank back into official silence, especially among the working class, for several decades.
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Thursday, November 14, 2024 - 07:00
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 300 – Where I Have Been, Where I Will Go - transcript
(Originally aired 2024/11/16 - listen here)
This is the 300th episode of the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast. For several previous big-number episodes, I’ve celebrated by posting some bonus fiction, and I thought about recording another of my short stories to do the same this time. But the Project and the podcast are reaching something of a turning point in terms of directions, so I thought that I’d talk about that instead. About what we’ve done and what we plan to do.
I love numbers and counting things, so first let’s review some numbers. Although I’ve been collecting materials towards this project since the ‘80s, the Lesbian Historic Motif Project was officially launched on June 9, 2014 when I posted the first blog summarizing a publication. I somehow neglected to take note of the 10th anniversary of the blog a few months ago, so I think we can consider this episode to count toward that celebration. Cue the confetti and balloons! Ten years is a long time for any project in internet years.
Since then, I’ve blogged 444 individual books and articles, in a total of 700 blog posts. There’s no fear that I’ll run out of publications anytime soon, because my database has another 600 titles that I haven’t tackled yet, though I do find myself adding new entries at a slower rate these days. Perhaps some day I’ll be caught up…if I keep going that long.
I always have the illusion that the podcast came along significantly later than the blog, but in reality I started it about 2 years later. In the last 8 years, I’ve produced 84 shows about lesbian-relevant history, biography, and literature, 55 interviews, 35 episodes talking with people about their favorite books and movies, 31 fiction episodes, 87 monthly roundups of new books and news of the field, and 18 shows in the “Our F/Favorite Tropes” series. Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the main topic of this episode: the future of the Lesbian Historic Motif Project.
When I first conceived of the Project back in the ‘80s, I wanted to create a sourcebook of historic research to help people create lesbian characters in historic settings. I figured it would be a manageable project because, after all, how much information could there be? (Pause while I glance sideways at my database with over a thousand publications listed.) I started the blog 10 years ago when I concluded that a more rational approach was to create an ongoing annotated bibliography. It would start getting the information out there. It would give me an incentive to start reading and processing all the publications I’d been collecting. And people could search the Project for topics relevant to their own interests. The blog has always had two parallel functions. For those who want a general, high-level understanding, the summaries themselves are available. But for those who want to do their own in-depth research, the Project offers guideposts, bibliographies, and sometimes links to the original publications it’s based on.
In the last year or so, I’ve come back around to the conclusion that my original idea was viable after all. Or, at least, that some version of that sourcebook was a viable idea. I have enough material—between the blog and the podcast—to put together something approaching my original vision: a one-stop sourcebook for people who want information on lesbian-like characters in history. A lot of the text is already written, albeit in a form that will need considerable editing. So the next big step for the Project will be to create that sourcebook.
Since making that decision, I’ve started focusing the podcast essays on creating chapters to fill in the outline I’ve drafted. Soon, I’ll be looking for input and feedback on what potential readers want to see in a resource of this type. But for now, I thought I’d celebrate this podcast milestone by laying out the current vision.
One of my tragic flaws is tending to over-explain the purpose and context of my research, so of course the book will start out with an overly detailed introductory section where I talk about the purpose of the book—what it is and is not trying to do, the background of the project, a discussion of the terminology and vocabulary I’ll be using, and the basic philosophical framework.
One of the biggest philosophical issues in the study of queer history is the consideration of how modern gender and sexual identities relate to those in history—if they do at all. So the next section of the book will be exploring that concept and offering tools for thinking about how we can create characters who both reflect their own setting and also offer connection for modern readers. This will start off with my favorite metaphor: that gender and sexuality identities are like prepositions—every language is trying to describe the same physical reality, but speakers of different languages perceive and describe the relationships in that reality differently. It’s a really fun metaphor to explore, though probably no one else is quite as geeky about prepositional semantics as I am. The section will then review various historic models of gender and sexuality and talk about how they both reflected and shaped people’s understandings of their own lives.
After that, I move on to some useful specifics. What is the vocabulary that was used historically for women who loved women? How did the nuances of meaning change, even when the same words were used? Who used which words? What evidence do we have for specific sexual acts and techniques that female couples performed? How did people talk and think about them? For that matter, what did people categorize as “sex” in various times and places? Is sexual activity necessary to identify a character as lesbian?
I want to have a chapter specifically discussing the complex interactions of sexuality and gender presentation, both historically and as interpreted by modern authors and readers. In what contexts has cross-dressing been associated with lesbianism? How can we understand and deal with the ambiguities of female masculinity in a historic context? Which models of lesbianism invoke female masculinity and which ones don’t touch on it at all?
I have a section planned that explores the social context of identifiable same-sex relationships—the ways they were performed, perceived, and commemorated—as well as a look at the broader range of community structures and categories that interacted with lesbianism in different ways: religious communities, all-female spaces, the overlay of racial and class identities, legal considerations, and the useful parallels between lesbians and single women.
There will be an entire section of micro-biographies of historic figures who illustrate various ways of relating to the concept of lesbianism, as well as another entire section cataloging historic literature that portrayed same-sex desire in various forms.
And finally, I come to a very practical part of the book for authors: a discussion of the dynamics of historic romance tropes and character types when applied to female couples, and roadmaps for writing lesbian characters in specific settings. The tropes series is, of course, the place where I’m drafting out the former. The latter is going to take the most new work. There is no way to cover every possible time, place, and culture, even when I limit myself mostly to Europe and North America. Both the historic record and my own research limitations mean that I have large gaps for certain cultures and time periods. In the end, I’ll probably stick to a handful of specific, popular settings—such as the chapter I’ve already written on the English Regency. And, of course, I won’t be attempting to provide a complete historic guide to those settings, just the elements relevant to creating lesbian characters. There’s no substitute for doing the groundwork to immerse yourself in the time and place of your story.
The sourcebook will inevitably conclude with a massive bibliography, probably with brief notes about the content and usefulness of each title.
The intent with this reference is not to prescribe how people must depict lesbian characters in history, but to provide tools and information that can be used to do so. It isn’t going to be a restaurant serving up specific dishes, but a grocery offering ingredients. When interviewing authors of historic fiction on the podcast, the most common refrain I hear is, “I couldn’t find any research, so I just had to make things up.” And while there will always be gaps where making things up is inevitable, I’d like to reduce the frequency of this complaint.
I don’t have a solid timeline on when my sourcebook will be ready for publication. The serious work of turning the current raw text into something ready for prime time won’t happen until after I retire next May (and will be competing with my return to working on my own fiction), but I have hopes that maybe two years from now I can think of planning a release date. Two years from now will be the 10th anniversary of the podcast, and wouldn’t that be a nice way to commemorate it?
In the mean time, if you would like to celebrate 300 episodes of the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast, the best way to do it is to tell other potential listeners about the show and encourage them to give it a try. The second best way is to leave a review on your podcast app, assuming that it takes reviews. (The Apple podcast site is a really useful place for reviews to result in visibility.) The third best way to celebrate our anniversary is to drop me some fan mail on social media and tell me what the show means to you. Podcasting is a lonely business and even one or two personal notes every year can mean a lot.
Show Notes
In this episode we talk about:
- A look back at what the Project has accomplished
- Plans for publishing a research sourcebook
- Outline of the sourcebook contents
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
- Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
- Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
- RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
- Twitter: @LesbianMotif
- Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
- The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon
Links to Heather Online
- Website: http://alpennia.com
- Email: Heather Rose Jones
- Mastodon: @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop
- Bluesky: @heatherrosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
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LHMPSunday, November 10, 2024 - 10:10
One subtext to the history of English legal handling of lesbianism is a rebuttal of any notion that laws and attitudes have historically moved in a consistent direction. It's particularly important to keep this in mind when writing historical fiction set before the 20th century. (This applies generally, but particularly in England.) There was a scene in the tv series Gentleman Jack where Anne Walker freaks out over the thought of legal prosecution for her relationship with Ann Lister. Perhaps it made dramatic sense as a contributing motivation for the character's ambivalence, but the simple fact is that threat she imagined did not exist. They faced social hazards, but there was no laws at that time under which anything they were doing as a couple could be prosecuted.
Derry, in diving deeply into the legal cases that can be identified, somewhat inadvertently makes this point. The contexts in which the law was applied were very specific and narrow anddid not address lesbianism itself as a "crime" -- only as a situation that perhaps left courts looking more closely for something else they could prosecute. Derry's main thesis is that the goal of laws around lesbianism was to keep it as invisible as possible, for which goal prosecution was counter-indicated. I'll touch back on this more in my overall comments when I've finished the book.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Derry, Caroline. 2020. Lesbianism and the Criminal Law: Three Centuries of Legal Regulation in England and Wales. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-030-35299-8
Chapter 4: ‘Gross Indecency Between Females’: The 1921 Parliamentary Debates
In 1921, Parliament debated, but did not pass, a bill that would have criminalized “gross indecency between female persons” as part of a general male reaction to the new freedoms and social power women were obtaining. There was a belief that if women engaged in lesbianism, they would never again be interested in men. Unlike in previous discussions, lesbianism was named and discussed explicitly, though the proposed law still danced around it, using the general term “indecency.” This clause was added to a bill that would have closed some loopholes around sexual crimes, and Derry asserts that adding lesbianism was meant as a deliberate poison pill to derail the original. Arguments against the lesbianism clause included the idea that enshrining it explicitly would give women ideas, via the ensuing press coverage of trials. (The original bill was raised again and passed in the next session, but without the lesbianism clause.)
The chapter discusses reasons why lesbianism was chosen as a poison pill, as well as why it was proposed seriously. There were suggestions that women were luring girls into their houses for sexual exploitation. A rising familiarity with sexology, and its concern with lesbianism, was also prevalent though this is rarely referenced in the parliamentary debate. The clause was presented as creating gender-neutral laws regarding sex crimes. Feminist groups that in general supported the revisions to sex crime legislation were often vulnerable to suspicion of lesbianism, with many unmarried and sharing their lives with female companions.
Lesbianism was becoming a more visible theme in popular consciousness. During World War I, women as well as men were identified as blackmail risks due to homosexuality. Dancer Maud Allan, appearing in a private performance of Oscar Wilde’s Salome, faced charges of lesbianism that she met with a libel case, with a key argument being that Allan’s familiarity with the word “clitoris” was proof of her lesbianism. Lesbianism was a suggested to be a symptom of a general national degeneracy. These arguments were entangled with historical theories about the decline of classical civilizations, and the concerns of the new eugenics movement (though some eugenics proponents argued that lesbianism was harmless as it was self-limiting in reproductive terms).
The following are my somewhat less coherent notes about the content of the chapter.
Arguments against increasing the penalties for homosexual behavior included that anti-homosexuality laws created the opportunity for blackmail. The medicalization of sexuality was at that time viewed as progressive rather than homophobic. There was an increasing reaction against legislating morality generally. More specifically, conservative views weren’t ready to embrace the equivalence of male and female sexuality that anti-lesbian laws presumed.
There is a discussion of sexological theory and differences between continental versus English attitudes towards lesbianism. The medicalization of homosexuality occurred earlier for women than for men. The feminist movement of “new women” was challenged as causing/reflecting women’s moral and physical weakness.
What did parliament think they were addressing in terms of lesbian sexual acts? The details don’t appear in the speeches, but some hints show up in private correspondence. One letter refers to legislating against “the sale of any implements required” (which may presumably be understood as dildos). While both “gross indecency” and “buggery” were addressed separately for men with different penalties, there was no conception of non-penetrative “indecency” between women – or at least that fell within the topics that Parliament considered unspeakable. Discussions indicated a discomfort about criminalizing romantic female friendships. “Female inverts” were imagined as always “masculine” and socially nonconforming.
The 1921 debates existed within a wider anxiety around gender roles, particularly among elite men. Women were entering previously exclusively-male fields, such as police, parliament, and law. There is a discussion of changes in the social make-up and visibility of class and race. Feminists were not unified in their attitude towards lesbianism. Some grounded their philosophy in the idea of “separate spheres” seeing lesbians as unfeminine, while others embraced a rejection of marriage and motherhood that was more supportive of lesbianism.
Women were only beginning to be able to vote and stand for parliament. (There was only one female member of parliament in 1921.) Women were beginning to enter legal professions, and be able to serve as justices and jurors. All this meant that female voices did not contribute directly to the 1921 debates and lesbianism was still framed as a topic whose discussion was restricted to men.
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Monday, November 4, 2024 - 20:38
Once again, I'll save my overall thoughts for the end of this set of posts. (In part because I want to get the posts up and haven't yet solidified what I want to say, overall.)
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Derry, Caroline. 2020. Lesbianism and the Criminal Law: Three Centuries of Legal Regulation in England and Wales. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-030-35299-8
Chapter 3: Louise Mourey and the ‘Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’
The central premise of this chapter Is to examine how the law came to acknowledge the existence of sexual “indecent assault” by one woman against another. But the case used to illustrate this concerns a midwife who was hired to examine the virginity of an underage girl being procured for prostitution. The case had a number of complicating factors. The men doing the procuring were anti-prostitution activists and journalists, working to demonstrate how easy it was to obtain such victims. One focus of such campaigns was to raise the female age of consent from 13 to 16. And the nonconsensual examination falls more rationally in the realm of medical practice than sexual activity.
The use of this case study is in support of the motif of “silencing”. Even in the context of female-on-female assault, the legal language declines to specify what might constitute “indecent” actions between women.
The social context includes a shift from viewing sex crimes against women as a property crime against a male patriarch to a moral crime against female innocence. “Innocence” was conditional. Prior to 1880, there was no fixed age of consent for women and the assertion of consent – even for a child of six – was defense against sexual charges. (That was the year when the age of consent was established as 13.) In theory, the Mourey case established that this age of consent also applied to acts between female persons.
Female husbands did not disappear in the 19th century, but became less of a legal concern. The most significant legal case involving lesbianism in the early part of the century was the libel claim in which to school teachers (Pirie and Woods) sued the guardian of one of their pupils for spreading the rumor that they were having sex, resulting in the failure of their school. In secret legal hearings, the strategy was formed of attributing even the idea that women could engage in lesbian sex to the debased imagination of the student – a mixed race Anglo-Indian girl – and to a servant at the school. Thus reinforcing the idea that respectable women would not even be aware of such things but foreigners and the lower classes might. The court records explicitly note that admitting the possibility of lesbianism between white middle-class women would destroy the foundations of society, which relied on confidence in “the purity of female manners” given the free access women had to each other.
While the suspicion of lesbianism might persist for working class women, it was so thoroughly excluded from the scrutiny of the law that female husbands were no longer subjected to even tangential charges. When Bill/Mary Chapman was found to be female, when acquitted of an assault charge involving his common-law wife, Isabella Watson, the judge noted of the domestic situation “I know of no law to punish her.” There was no longer a legal context for turning public disapproval into official action.
When Harriet Stokes wanted to leave her abusive husband, Henry, she mentioned that some time ago she had discovered that Henry was a woman, but though this aided in getting a satisfactory separation, the authorities recorded that “no legal procedures have been, or indeed could be, taken.” When John Smith/Sophia Locke was revealed after death to have been female, his female partner acknowledged awareness and asserted the arrangement was economic, which was seized on by the press, who proclaimed there could be no motive other than abetting the disguise.
The preceding cases are from the 1830s, and no subsequent female husband cases have been identified. Female husbands might be mentioned in criminal records, but only in the context of unrelated offenses, such as domestic violence or employment-related crimes. The difference is that while the cross-dressing and domestic arrangements might be noted as background in the trial, there is no suggestion that they are criminal in and of themselves.
There is a discussion of the changing stereotypes regarding women’s roles, and how the official image of the “domestic married woman” conflicted with reality. In 1851 it is estimated that half of British women were not married, that a quarter would never marry, and that a quarter of married women were employed outside the home. At the end of the century, it’s estimated that one third of women were employed outside of the home, although this included domestic servants.
The minority of women fit the image used to argue for women’s inherent domesticity and inability. That illusion also included the assertion of women’s sexual passivity and ignorance. But passivity and ignorance were enforced by patriarchal society. One emerging means was by medicalizing women’s sexual agency via psychiatric diagnosis and “treatment” including the extreme approach of clitoridectomy for women engaging in masturbation or lesbianism, fortunately a relatively short-lived treatment. Within this medicalization, lesbianism was not defined or identified specifically, but was lumped in with any type of sexual urge or activity that did not center men’s desires, as well as other behaviors that showed resistance to approved feminine behavior.
The chapter briefly notes the continuing professionalization and standardization of criminal trials, as well as examples of the sexual double standard that excused men’s behavior as “natural” while stigmatizing women’s as “criminal.”
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Sunday, November 3, 2024 - 08:44
In this second chapter of Derry's book on legal aspects of lesbianism in England, the focus is on situations when "female husbands" (i.e., assinged-female persons living as men who married women or presented themselves as being married to women). In fact, a great deal of the pre-20th century focus of Derry's work is focused strongly on the specific topic of how the law (and the newspapers) dealt with "female husbands," while lesbianism that took other forms was not generally of interest to the law. More on this when I do my concluding discussion of the book.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Derry, Caroline. 2020. Lesbianism and the Criminal Law: Three Centuries of Legal Regulation in England and Wales. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-030-35299-8
Chapter 2: Mary/Charles Hamilton: Eighteenth-Century Female Husband Prosecutions
Changes in understandings of Lesbianism in the 18th century can be illustrated by newspaper and legal accounts of “female husbands,” for example, the famous case of Charles/Mary Hamilton. Hamilton’s case was not particularly unusual, but the attention given to it was. Hamilton was working as a quack doctor, who courted and married the daughter of his landlady. Two months later, the bride announced that her husband was a woman and a legal inquiry resulted, including depositions by both partners. Hamilton had begun living as male at age 14, and worked for a traveling mountebank, selling quack cures. Hamilton’s wife testified that they had penetrative intercourse several times, supporting her belief that Hamilton was a man, but later became doubtful. No other details of the sex are recorded.
The wife had not made a legal complaint. Rather, the prosecution was brought by the town council who wanted Hamilton punished by whipping. The charge – after much debate – was brought as vagrancy. (Other similar cases were more often brought as fraud.) Hamilton initially pled not guilty, but the punishment was carried out and later he later withdrew the plea. There is no further evidence of what happened to Hamilton, but the case itself grew legs in the popular media, especially after being fictionalized by author Henry Fielding in The Female Husband, the popular term for such situations, and in some cases how the people engaged in them viewed themselves.
Newspaper accounts use various techniques to silence the lesbian aspects of these relationships: ridicule, attribution of financial motives, emphasis on elements that undermine the image of commitment, such as serial or bigamous marriages, or depicting the marriage as intended as a joke. Even when legal charges are mentioned, the specifics are not always clear, but financial fraud is a common theme.
The Marriage Act of 1753 was meant to address irregular marriages in general, but doesn’t seem to have had a noticeable effect on the frequency or treatment of female husbands. The wives of female husbands sometimes brought complaints, sometimes simply spilled the beans, and sometimes entered into or continued the marriage well aware of their husband’s nature and content with the situation. In one such case, the attempt to bring charges failed, as the wife refused to cooperate, but Derry attributes the lack of punishment in that case to the female husband’s professed heterosexual backstory and willingness to return to living as a woman. Some prosecutions might appear to be straightforward fraud cases, such as Charles/Ann Marlow, who married three women in turn to obtain money and clothing from them. But a comparison of the penalty (being pilloried) to similar offenses places the concern more into the category of sexual offences.
How do public trials and punishments constitute “silencing?” Prior to the Reformation, sexual offenses were handled by ecclesiastical courts. But in that era, secular courts rarely directly initiated cases, except for major offenses. Rather, lawsuits were raised by those affected, and courts had a great deal of discretion. That same discretion meant that when a court did choose to pursue a case, it could shop around for an applicable law, as in the vacancy charge against Charles Hamilton.
The chapter now turns to what we can decipher about the subjects of these cases. They were in general living marginal, and often semi-criminal lives. Their motivations for marriage are doubtless varied, and even when explanations occur in the legal record, they are not trustworthy, due to the motivation for telling specific types of stories to win sympathy. The alleged financial motivation (fraud) rarely makes sense when balanced against the risk of exposure. The place of romantic/sexual desire is debated by historians. Other plausible motivations are simple companionship, social expectations (contributing to the presentation as a man in society), or the practical logistics of running a household.
The role of the wives is also considered. Apparently, they neither feared nor experienced negative consequences for their marriages, even when they were not the complainant. The most plausible explanation is that, in the absence of a law against “lesbian sex,” there was no crime they had committed. But this isn’t sufficient explanation. If marriage between two women was “fraud” then the wife was as guilty as the husband (if she knew her husband was female). Derry suggests that the absence of prosecution against the wives was to divert attention from the true offense (lesbianism) as the wife could be framed as keeping to a traditional role of “wife.” [Note: A more straightforward explanation might be that the true "crime" was a woman appropriating a male role, hence the wife committed no crime.]
By focusing prosecution on the disruption of approved social rules, the underlying sexual anxieties could be kept out of the public record and view.
In 19th-century cases, the developing stereotype of women as sexually passive enabled a defense of ignorance, even when it flew in the face of actual female experiences. Even a presumption of sexual innocence and ignorance was not an overwhelming defense for the wives, as public opinion could generate persecution, even when the law assigned no guilt. Even so, if a wife no longer desired to remain in the marriage, she had a straightforward means of dissolving it with little financial penalty. These complexities mean that the wives of female husbands were never entirely passive agents in how things played out.
When the law code prescribed harsh penalties, it was common for them to be mitigated by pardons. Further, penalties might be very specific to the offense, and judges had discretion about how to charge the offender. Most serious offenses were property crimes, and the legal concern with sex was largely restricted to penetration (rape and sodomy, using the narrow definition of anal intercourse). In contrast, a female husband’s offense was a challenge to male privilege. Thus when legal charges were brought, they focused on those elements, especially the “property crime” issue of fraud. Sexual intercourse came into it only as a means of supporting the fraud. The emotional aspects of sex could be excluded from the record.
Women living as men in 18th century England were rarely prosecuted. And given the legal and social constraints on women’s lives, there were many non-romantic motivations for gender disguise. The law restricted its concern to cases involving marriage.
What were the changes that led to this hostility to female husbands? Social hierarchies were being overturned by the Industrial Revolution, the rise of the mercantile class, the injection of colonial wealth, and anxieties sparked by the French Revolution. All of this became intertwined with anxieties about gender roles and “respectable” sexual conduct. The proportion of never-married women dipped in mid-century, and women trended to a younger age of first marriage, in part due to (men’s) expanded wage-earning potential. (In England, age at marriage related to the accumulation of enough money to establish a separate household.) Another factor was an increasing focus on PIV sex relative to other non-procreative sexual activities that previously had been widespread. Sex became viewed as an economic activity for the production of children, rather than being focused on pleasure. This narrowed definitions of sex to those aimed at conception.
All of this created a hostility to single women, who were increasingly viewed as sexually suspect, rather than as part of the continuum of options for women. In contrast to men, wage earning possibilities for women were narrowing and becoming less viable. This increasingly pressured unemployed single women into domestic service, attaching them to a patriarchal household.
One escape from these narrowed options for women was to become a man. Increasing mobility and urban job concentrations meant that a change of identity was more possible than in a less mobile society. All of these shifts, of course, simplify a complex picture. General hostility can be contrasted against individual examples of sympathy and support for female husbands. Press reports interleaved hostility with curiosity and even celebration, mitigated by an emphasis on how each case was “extraordinary.”
Toward the end of the 18th century, the press became increasingly close-mouthed about the salacious details of sexual offenses, advertising how their reports could not offend sensitive readers. (And thus depriving those readers of actionable suggestions.)
To the extent that sapphism was visible in the press, it was presented as a lower-class phenomenon (or, in contrast, an upper-class decadence) that threatened to “infect” the middle-class readership of the popular press. In contrast, close female friendships (non-sexual) were valorized for middle-class women, making it all the more important to establish clear lines between appropriate and inappropriate behavior.
Medical theories about gender and sex were also shifting in the 18th century. [Note: though, as many have noted, this shift was not absolute, and different models prevail in parallel during most eras, emphasized in different contexts. See Laqueur 1990 for a discussion of the shift from a “one sex” to “two sex” model that is under discussion here.]
A significant consequence of this shift was the rise of the idea that men and women were fundamentally different, enabling the rise of the model of the passive, passionless, sexually-indifferent woman as the ideal. It also gave ammunition to resistance to movements for women’s social and legal equality.
In parallel, a consequence of the focus on PIV sex and discouragement of non-procreative erotic activity was a rising concern with masturbation. For women, this included concern that clitoral-focused pleasure (only officially recognized in the preceding couple of centuries) was inherently detrimental to health. The specter of sexual activity using (or causing) a large clitoris became an underpinning to horror of lesbianism. But in parallel with this came a rise of the idea of same-sex desire as a social phenomenon, rather than a physiological one. Hence the fading traces of concern in the case of female husbands that there was a physical cause for their behavior.
Finally, changes in the practice of justice came to bear on the question. The combination of victim-driven rather than state-driven prosecutions, combined with significant judicial discretion, meant that 18th century, female husband prosecutions could be idiosyncratic. But across the century this began to change, with civic concerns beginning to drive prosecutions and trials becoming more professionalized, especially in terms of the participation of defense counsel and standardized procedures. Punishments, too, were becoming more formalized, and shifting away from community-driven penalties, such as the pillory. These shifts contributed to the ability of the courts to enforce silencing of the topic of lesbianism.
The question remains: if lesbianism itself was not illegal, why were female husbands punished? One element is that, regardless of the actual (absence of) statutes, the public viewed lesbianism as criminal behavior, as illustrated by many references in literature using that word. (More overt references to lesbians in 17th and 18th century literature largely occur in male-focused pornography.) To some extent, it is only in comparison to punishments for male sodomy that the punishments for female husbands seem light. Sentences of whipping, imprisonment, and pillorying were among the harshest available for non-capital crimes and often harsher than the typical ones for fraud and vagrancy.
The elements typically involved are cross-dressing and the presence of sexual activity, with the usurpation of male identity being key. But this conflicts somewhat with the lack of similar responses to female cross-dressing when marriage was not involved. [Note: Derry doesn't focus on it here, but there is also an absence of legal involvement when sex, but not cross-dressing, is present. This is touched on in the following chapters.] Derry argues that the essential factor in bringing the force of law is: women living together, separate from any male presence. They were not simply taking economic advantage of male identity and establishing emotional relationships with women, but were doing so with a rejection of any type of male oversight or authority. They dared to be self-sufficient and independent.
The chapter has a final note about dildos. An essential element of how female husband cases were presented to the public was in discounting and denying any meaningfulness of the marriages. They were fraud. They were shams. They were jokes. They had no basis for being successful as no penis was involved. When the existence of a dildo is invoked in the records, it is talked around. It is considered unmentionable, unnameable. It is considered a tool for fraud, not for pleasure. The dildo is “not fit to be mentioned.” By the mid 18th century, the dildo was no longer treated as a toy used by sexually frustrated women, but rather as a symbol of masculine desire in women. Even the (silenced) focus on the function of a dildo in these marriages erases the possibility of non-phallic pleasures.
In summary, the key elements of female husbands that drew legal attention was not cross-dressing alone, not emotional bond between women alone, not even sexual activity between women alone, but the combination – which created the image of female independence and autonomy from male authority. They dared to make men irrelevant. It was that possibility that required suppression and silencing.
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Saturday, November 2, 2024 - 07:00
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 299 - On the Shelf for November 2024 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2024-11-02 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for November 2024.
Even here in sunny California, November means that summer is well and truly over. We’ve just barely turned our air conditioners off and now it’s time to turn the heaters on. For me, it also means time to have a pot of home-made soup simmering on the stove, and perhaps for many of you it’s time to hunker down with a mug of cocoa and a good book. Good books are what we’re all about here. (Here in the USA we’re also angsting over a significant election that won’t have happened yet when this episode comes out, so I’m just going to skip that topic for the moment.)
With the end of the year coming up, it’s also time to spread the word about the submissions period for next year’s fiction series. The detailed call for submissions is up on the website and is functionally identical to last time. So encourage all the authors you know—including yourself, if that applies—to create a sapphic historical story for our consideration. Submissions will be open in January and I hope, once again, to have a difficult time narrowing the field down to our four picks. As a reminder, submissions are limited to 5000 words and the pay rate is 8 cents per word. Please read the call for submissions carefully so you’re familiar with the other requirements.
Publications on the Blog
For the blog, I’ve been working on a summary of Caroline Derry’s Lesbianism and the Criminal Law in preparation for an episode on legal aspects of lesbianism across the centuries. I’ll probably get the first few chapters up by the time this goes live. I have a few more articles earmarked for that episode, which I need to get working on. But the podcast episode itself will be scheduled for January at the earliest because I did some rearranging of the schedule to fit in an interview that expanded from the brief spots I include on this show to a full-length podcast episode. More on that later.
No book shopping this month, alas. Not that I have any scarcity of research books to work on.
Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
Thankfully, there’s always new fiction. And what do we have that’s new and recent? I found 3 October releases that I hadn’t spotted previously.
Redway Acres: Grace by Trish Henry Green is a Regency-era novel about love and family legacies. This is part of a larger series revolving around families in a particular community, but it appears to be the only sapphic book in the series.
How can a woman, with a legacy usually inherited by a man, fulfil her obligations when only taught to be a ‘Lady’?
Lady Grace Bainbridge watches helplessly as Bainbridge Hall falls into disrepair after a rift cut her off from family aid. Attending a cousin’s wedding gives her hope of mending bridges, but the advice received is that she must marry.
Uncertain of her fate, Grace’s wish to remain at Bainbridge and her mother’s shocking behaviour further limit her choice of a husband.
Complicating matters is Dowager Baroness Beatrice’s return to society with her husband. Grace emboldens his sister, Olivia, to stand up to Beatrice, the consequences of which spark questions about a shooting accident some years prior.
As the costs of Beatrice’s revenge play out, Grace begins to doubt her reliance upon her friend’s advice. Meanwhile, her newfound empathy for another’s plight jeopardises Grace’s financial reprieve.
Last month we had Nicole Kotoman’s somewhat generically-titled A Victorian Tale of Life and Love, and this month the sequel follows: Another Victorian Tale of Life and Love (Victorian Tales #2). This story follows the same characters, later in their lives.
Madeline and Andrea are back, along with their close-knit family and friends. Cassandra, one of their daughters, falls in love and embarks on an adventurous journey abroad. Will her newfound love withstand the trials that await? How will her family react to her runaway and decision to dress like a man?
When Hearts are True by L.J. Corelli from QTT Publishing is described as a reimagined, feminist take on the classic Victorian novel Beatrice by H. Rider Haggard. Haggard’s book is about the star-crossed love between Beatrice and an unhappily married London barrister. Corelli’s story gender-flips the love interest, making it the barrister’s wife who falls in love with Beatrice.
The story explores the unexpected friendship that blossoms between Beatrice, a beautiful, impoverished Welsh school teacher and Lady Georgina, the independent and unhappy wife of a London barrister. Their fates are sealed by a near death experience on the shores of Bryngelly in Wales. Drawn to one another by a love that surpasses the physical realm, their thrilling journey is filled with passion, danger, jealousy and the discovery of true love in a world that refuses to accept it.
Now, while I have no idea just how reimagined Corelli’s book is, I feel I should note that Haggard’s story is a tragedy with significant numbers of the central female characters dying by the end. So, reader beware.
The November books start off with a reprise of one I incorrectly scheduled as a July book: The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3) by Tasha Suri from Orbit Books had been rescheduled from July to November, but I hadn’t double-checked the release date when I included it earlier this summer. I’ve really enjoyed this historically-inspired fantasy series which grapples with the conflict between love and duty.
Malini has claimed her rightful throne as the empress of Parijatdvipa, just as the nameless gods prophesied. Now, in order to gain the support of the priesthood who remain loyal to the fallen emperor, she must consider a terrible bargain: Claim her throne and burn in order to seal her legacy—or find another willing to take her place on the pyre.
Priya has survived the deathless waters and now their magic runs in her veins. But a mysterious yaksa with flowering eyes and a mouth of thorns lies beneath the waters. The yaksa promises protection for Ahiranya. But in exchange, she needs a sacrifice. And she’s chosen Priya as the one to offer it.
Two women once entwined by fate now stand against each other. But when an ancient enemy rises to threaten their world, Priya and Malini will find themselves fighting together once more – to prevent their kingdoms, and their futures, from burning to ash.
Medieval settings are uncommon for sapphic historicals, so if that’s your jam, you might want to check out All the Painted Stars (14th Century Oxfordshire #2) by Emma Denny from HQ.
Oxfordshire 1362
When Lily Barden discovers her best friend Johanna’s hand in marriage is being awarded as the main prize at a tournament, she is determined to stop it. Disguised as a knight, she infiltrates the contest, preparing to fight for Jo’s hand. But her conduct ruffles feathers, and when a dangerous incident escalates out of Lily’s control, Jo must help her escape.
Finding safety with a local brewster, Lily and Jo soon settle into their new freedom, and amongst blackberry bushes and lakeside walks an unexpected relationship blossoms. But when Jo’s past catches up with her and Lily’s reckless behaviour threatens their newfound happiness, both women realise that choices must always come at a cost. The question they need to ask is if the cost is worth the price of love…
Time travel is the basic premise of Time and Tide by J.M. Frey.
When Sam’s plane crashes catastrophically over the Atlantic, it defies all odds for Sam to be the sole survivor. But it seems impossible that she’s rescued by a warship in 1805. With a dashing sea captain as her guide, she begins to find her footing in a world she’d only seen in movies.
Then Sam is betrayed. At the mercy of the men and morals of the time, and without the means to survive on her own, she’s left with no choice but to throw herself on the charity of the captain's sisters. She resigns herself to a quiet life of forever hiding her true self. What she doesn't expect is that her new landlady is Margaret Goodenough—the world-famous author whose yet-to-be-completed novel will contain the first lesbian kiss in the history of British Literature, and a clever woman. Clever enough to know her new companion has a secret.
As the two women grow ever closer, Sam must tread the tenuous line between finding her own happiness in a place where she doesn’t think she’ll ever fit in, and possibly (accidentally) changing the course of history.
This seems to be the month for less usual settings, as we see in the historic fantasy Monsoon Queen (The War Between Cedar and Oak #1) by Jo Carthage from NineStar Press.
Twenty-year-old Noor has been hiding her magic and biding her time in the spice markets of 1812 Tajoura as she and her neighbours wait for the ravenous British Empire to sail into their homeport, cannons blazing. But when the HMS Victory arrives, so does the chance of a lifetime to join a found family in the Yemeni resistance. Noor finds herself caught up in the fight against the Empire’s battle mages and Rami, the dark prince who leads them.
In a case of mistaken identity, Noor heals Rami before a decisive battle. She sees the good in him, and her heart is torn.
Noor’s new friend Razan—a brilliant and beautiful inventor for the resistance—has no such qualms. She hates Rami for his role in the raid that killed her parents. Razan has found a way to harness Noor’s power to defeat the British, and the two women grow ever closer. On a perilous camel ride to the coffee roasting city of Mocha, Rami strikes, kidnapping Noor and taking her back to his cruel master on the HMS Victory.
In order to survive, Noor will need to call on everything she learned in the spice markets and the Yemeni resistance.
Rebels, mages, lovers. With the final battle looming and the resistance struggling without her, Noor must keep her eye on the prize: saving Yemen from the British Empire. If she can keep Razan in her bed and save Rami from the Empire, she will have the future she’s always dreamed of. But first, Noor has to survive the storms to come.
I’ve done a bit of trimming of the cover copy for A Pearl Enraptured by Andrea K. Stein from Muirgen Publishing, LLC. The original text was a bit hard for me to follow, so once I got it sorted out, I wanted to help the book put its best foot forward. This book is part of a series “Five Pearls for the Earl” each featuring one of the several mistresses of the Earl of Framlingwood and her romance with someone who is not the Earl. So be aware that these are not conventional romance novels and probably have a relatively high erotic content.
Lord Framlingwood’s fifth mistress, Margot Fauchette, has a secret. She and her lady’s maid, Gabrielle Tamaryn, have lived the good life for several years, moving amongst the wealthy, sensuous men and women of the ton, flitting from one benefactor to the next. Margot prays none of her protectors discover that her lady’s maid is also her true love. Their light-hearted lifestyle crashes back to reality when Gabrielle’s dour brother, Captain Jameson Tamaryn, returns to London after a long voyage for the East India Company.
He’s incensed to find Gabrielle has disappeared from their family home in Surrey and that she’s apparently run off with her unconventional lover, Margot. He’s determined to end their “unnatural” alliance and see his sister safely married. But Gabrielle Tamaryn has no intention of giving up her carefree existence of endless sybaritic soirees and salons.
Margot and Gabrielle no more than put their heads together to figure out how to outwit Captain Tamaryn than they’re confronted by the prospect of unwanted guests in their townhouse. The Earl of Framlingwood insists that a Bond Street draper and his partner move in so that Margot’s townhouse can be re-decorated.
The women are wary but agree. How long could it take to re-decorate a compact townhouse that’s already well turned out? What possible harm could there be?
Outlaw Hearts by Lori G. Matthews from Bella Books is a fairly straightforward Western romance.
Outlaw Elle Barstow spends her days robbing stagecoaches with her gang, bedding women and, most importantly, keeping her heart safely locked away. Into her chaotic world slides entrancing Isabella “Izzy” Collins. Banished by her family, the feisty suffragette from Boston is on her way to marry a man more than twice her age. Elle stumbles upon Izzy’s stagecoach being robbed, rescues her, and is urged by Izzy to teach her how to survive on the land. Except Elle’s far more interested in stringing her along and collecting a reward for her safe return. There’s one hitch with that plan: Elle’s growing feelings for the beautiful woman.
The mysterious object found in an antique store or curio shop has long been a staple of imaginative fiction, leading the characters into a quest through time. This is the central trope of Timeless by Nicole Pyland from Pyland Publishing.
Quinn has no idea why a short trip to a small town turned into her moving there and buying an antique shop, but after five years of waiting, her answer walks right through the shop’s door.
Leaving the big city, Abby Brennon, a best-selling author, moves back home after looking for the quiet calm that comes from living in a small town but also something else that she can’t quite describe even to herself. When she walks into the antique shop and sees Quinn Jordan, things start to make sense.
A photo of two women from the 1930s inspires Abby to write a book about the two women in it, but the story doesn’t feel like fiction to her. That photo has both Quinn and Abby curious about its origin, and soon, they’re having visions of a shared past that feel so familiar, they must be real. Another photo of two other women brings about more visions, and it doesn’t take Quinn and Abby long to realize that these are visions of their past lives together.
Over centuries, they have found each other time and time again. They’ve fallen in love and passed that love onto the next version of themselves until they’re standing in that antique shop, wondering if they’re drawn to each other now because of their past, or if there is something real between them today.
Taiwan Travelogue by Shuang-zi Yang (translated by Lin King) from Graywolf Press has quite the literary background. The publicity says, “Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, this novel was a sensation on its first publication in Mandarin Chinese in 2020 and won Taiwan’s highest literary honor, the Golden Tripod Award. Taiwan Travelogue unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships.”
May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear.
Soon a Taiwanese woman―who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name―is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the “something” is.
What Am I Reading?
And what have I been reading in the last month? It’s been all audiobooks, as it often is. Especially since I did a bit more commuting that usual due to some audits at the day job.
Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein by Anne Eekhout, translated by Laura Watkinson is a literary novel with serious Freudian leanings, envisioning experiences that could have inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein. The story follows two timelines, the summer in 1816 when the Shelleys, Lord Byron, Dr. Polidori, and others challenged each other to write ghost stories (while engaging in complex intertwined love lives), and a summer four years earlier that Mary Shelley spent in Scotland with family friends, and her confusing and sometimes frightening adventures with Isabella Baxter. While the writing is evocative, the underlying moral seems to be “adolescent girls have hysterical fancies, which complicate the real trauma they experience from the unwanted attentions of predatory men.” There is a passing sapphic relationship between Mary and Isabella that contributes to Mary’s sense that everyone who ought to love her will abandon her.
On a much lighter and more positive note, in The Duke at Hazard, K.J. Charles has written a delightful homage to Georgette Heyer’s The Foundling, featuring a naïve young duke and his quest to prove himself competent and independent. While the adventures and characters parallel many of the same beats as Heyer’s book, they are reshaped by placing a gay male romance at the heart of the story, complete with the legal and class complications inherent in the times. Once again, what really grabs me about the relationship is that the characters care deeply about each other and do everything necessary to make things right when they screw up. Plus a side plot of a truly nasty villain who gets his comeuppance in a way that ties all the character threads together.
I made good use of a week of commuting to listen to Margaret Vandenburg’s Craze in order to finish it before recording an interview with her. The book is a bit of a hybrid of slice of life novel and history lesson, with the viewpoint character experiencing queer New York City in the 1920s. It isn’t exactly a romance novel, though there is a romance threading through it. Rather it’s a fictional biography of a time and place, filtered through a character who has a tendency to over-analyze her life and feelings (which benefits the reader’s understanding of the times). I was going to include the interview with Vandenburg as part of this episode, but 10 minutes into recording it was clear that we were having far too much fun talking and the interview needed to be its own episode. So look forward to listening in on that conversation in December.
I’ve been using some of my audiobook time to check in on authors and books that my friends all rave about but that I missed the first time around. This time it was The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells—the first book in her Raksura fantasy series. I have to say that the worldbuilding is amazing, but once again I kept getting put off by the extensive blow-by-blow battle sequences—a problem I also had with the one Murderbot book I read. This is definitely a “it’s not you, it’s me” thing and I wish I’d enjoyed it more.
Finally, I listened to Jeannelle M. Ferreira’s collection of poetry and short stories, The Fire and the Place in the Forest, including the story “Your Fingers Like Pen and Ink” which first appeared on this podcast. Listening to the collection as a whole, I had a bit of an epiphany that everything Ferreira writes—regardless of the purported literary form—seems to be want to be read as poetry. The prose has the same lyrical, impressionistic quality as the works that advertise themselves as poems. Seen that way, some of the narrative structural oddities of her novel The Covert Captain fall into place as part of a unified stylistic whole. If your brain works well with audiobooks, I highly recommend enjoying The Fire and the Place in the Forest that way (narrated by Violet Dixon) due to the poetic content.
Focus on 1920s Books
It’s been a while since I did a topic-based book appreciation segment, but I’ve been noticing what appears to be an increase in sapphic historicals set in the 1920s, and in preparation for my interview with Margaret Vandenburg, I thought I’d check out if I was imagining it. So I pulled out my spreadsheet—because I’m just a spreadsheet sort of gal. Sure enough, when I looked at the period when I’ve been tracking new releases, there’s a clear jump in the number and proportion of books set in that decade. Between 2015 and 2020, books set in the 1920s run about 3% of the total titles that I’ve found. But starting in 2021 to the present, stories with 1920s settings are running around 10% of the whole.
But why? I doubt it’s as simple as an anniversary—though it’s likely that returning to the ‘20s makes people a little more aware of what was happening a hundred years ago. And sometimes the dates have a direct connection. Several sapphic reimaginings of The Great Gatsby, such as Nghi Vo’s The Chosen and the Beautiful or Sarah Zane’s Beautiful Little Fool were only possible when the original passed into the public domain in 2021.
In my interview with Vandenburg we tossed around some thoughts about this trend, such as the unsettling parallels with a worldwide pandemic and the rise of fascism. Check out our discussion when that show goes live in December for more thoughts.
But for now, I thought I’d look at some of the themes and motifs that show up in current books set in the Roaring Twenties. Several major social trends intersected in that decade, contributing to the nickname. In the recoil after World War I, a generation of younger people—both in Europe and the US—seemed to want to drown out the memories of that horror with music, parties, and sexual license. The era is associated with jazz music, with the flappers who rejected conventional feminine modesty, and often with a sense of frivolous aimlessness that led some to call it the “lost generation,” especially in Europe.
In the US, of course, the ‘20s were dominated by Prohibition and its consequences. Rather than enforcing abstinence and sober propriety, Prohibition turned a substantial fraction of the population into lawbreakers, simply for the pleasures they engaged in. And once you’re a criminal for one of your pleasures, it’s harder to take seriously the legal consequences of your other pleasures. Speakeasies provided cover for all manner of technically illegal activities—like same-sex dancing—and glamorized intersections of class and race that were still unthinkable in daylight. All of these factors provide a backdrop for characters engaging in illicit adventures, forbidden romance, and the thrill of danger.
The intrigues of urban speakeasies set the scene for Alyssa Linn Palmer’s Midnight at the Orpheus, Brandy T. Wilson’s The Palace Blues, Katharine Schellman’s Last Call at the Nightingale, and Margaret Vandenburg’s Craze, while the supply side of bootlegging provide the backdrop for Missouri Vaun’s Whiskey Sunrise and Stacy Lynn Miller’s “Speakeasy” series beginning with Devil’s Slide.
The Harlem Renaissance was another rising movement in the 1920s, providing a vibrant cultural experience by and for Black Americans. Many prominent figures of the Harlem Renaissance and the Black music scene fall within the definition of queer.
Books with this setting include Anne Shade’s Masquerade, Ava Freeman’s The Sweetest Taboo, and Nekesa Afla’s three book series beginning with Dead Dead Girls,
Although it features less prominently in the books I’ve cataloged, the cabaret culture of 1920s Berlin has some of the same hedonistic abandon as America’s speakeasy culture, both carrying the same sense of impending doom, such as Kip Wilson’s The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin.
But there’s another more sober strand of queer fiction set in the 1920s. Especially in stories with English settings, the liberty that young women experienced doing work during the war had its echoes in post-war careers. Ambulance drivers and nurses worked side-by-side often in all-female groups, experiencing the heightened emotions of wartime and sometimes emerging with new visions of how they wanted to spend their lives—and with whom.
Some stories with this theme include April Yates’s Ashthorne, A.L. Lester’s The Fog of War, and Charlotte Anne Hamilton’s Of Trust and Heart.
These are only a few of the titles set in the 1920s, and there are plenty of stories that don’t fit within the preceding themes. But if you have a hankering to read about sapphic lives a hundred years ago, these books give you a place to start.
Show Notes
In this episode we talk about:
- Call for submissions for the 2024 LHMP audio short story series. See here for details.
- Recent and upcoming publications covered on the blog
- Derry, Caroline. 2020. Lesbianism and the Criminal Law: Three Centuries of Legal Regulation in England and Wales. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-030-35299-8
- Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction
- Redway Acres: Grace by Trish Henry Green
- Another Victorian Tale of Life and Love (Victorian Tales #2) by Nicole Kotoman
- When Hearts are True by L.J. Corelli
- The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3) by Tasha Suri
- All the Painted Stars (14th Century Oxfordshire #2) by Emma Denny
- Time and Tide by J.M. Frey
- Monsoon Queen (The War Between Cedar and Oak #1) by Jo Carthage
- A Pearl Enraptured by Andrea K. Stein
- Outlaw Hearts by Lori G. Matthews
- Timeless by Nicole Pyland
- Taiwan Travelogue by Shuang-zi Yang (trans. Lin King)
- What I’ve been consuming
- Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein by Anne Eekhout, translated by Laura Watkinson
- The Duke at Hazard by K. J. Charles
- Craze by Margaret Vandenburg
- The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells
- The Fire and the Place in the Forest by Jeannelle M. Ferreira
- A special book appreciation segmenton books set in the 1920s
- Nghi Vo The Chosen and the Beautiful
- Sarah Zane Beautiful Little Fool
- Alyssa Linn Palmer Midnight at the Orpheus
- Brandy T. Wilson The Palace Blues
- Katharine Schellman Last Call at the Nightingale
- Margaret Vandenburg Craze
- Missouri Vaun Whiskey Sunrise
- Stacy Lynn Miller Devil’s Slide
- Anne Shade Masquerade
- Ava Freeman The Sweetest Taboo
- Nekesa Afla Dead Dead Girls
- Kip Wilson The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin
- April Yates Ashthorne
- A.L. Lester The Fog of War
- Charlotte Anne Hamilton Of Trust and Heart
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
- Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
- Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
- RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
- Twitter: @LesbianMotif
- Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
- The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon
Links to Heather Online
- Website: http://alpennia.com
- Email: Heather Rose Jones
- Mastodon: @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop
- Bluesky: @heatherrosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
Major category:
LHMPThursday, October 31, 2024 - 18:46
I'll have some overall thoughts on this book after I've blogged the whole thing. Right now I just want to start posting the summary as impetus to read the last couple chapters (which cover the 20th century, and so aren't part of my primary interest).
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Derry, Caroline. 2020. Lesbianism and the Criminal Law: Three Centuries of Legal Regulation in England and Wales. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-030-35299-8
Chapter 1: Introduction
Derry begins by contradicting the myth that Queen Victoria was the reason there were no laws in England against lesbianism. There are three problems with this myth: no such law was proposed; if it had been, the queen wouldn’t have any power to block it; and such a blockage wouldn’t explain the earlier absence of such laws. But the lack of specific laws doesn’t equal the “benign neglect” suggested by some historians. The main policy against lesbianism was silencing. Laws would recognize lesbianism as “a thing,” whereas silencing was aimed at preventing it from being imaginable.
That doesn’t mean there were no laws or sanctions brought to bear when lesbianism was seen as a threat. Nor was the progression of legal attitudes toward lesbianism consistent. The book uses specific case studies to examine the progression of official responses (both legal and medical) to the specter of sex between women. [Only two of the case studies fall before 1900, so my consideration of much of the book will be more cursory.]
Several themes emerge: the obscuring of lesbianism through denial or through equating lesbians with gay men; the connection between attitudes toward lesbianism and more general attitudes towards female sexuality; and the focus of the law on challenges to hetero-patriarchal privilege.
The next section of the chapter contains definitions. The focus of the book is on the regulation of lesbianism, not of lesbians, but the legal system for the most part avoided naming or recognizing lesbian relations or persons. The focus is on how the legal system viewed and treated people, not on self-identity or applicable modern identities. The book recognizes that the use of “lesbianism” is potentially anachronistic, but rejects some of the other scholarly approaches to the question and trusts the reader to understand the context just as with “family” or “marriage.”
While avoiding putting forth a definition for “lesbian” the law is clear about defining its concerns. It is concerned with relationships that represent a “facsimile of heterosexual marriage” while sidestepping the question of sex. Alternately, it is concerned with specifics of sexual activity: genital contact, penetration, analogues of PIV intercourse. In neither case is the law concerned with individual identity, but rather with whether the subjects can be rehabilitated to heterosexuality and her place in patriarchal society. Temporary deviations from hetero-patriarchy were of little interest, only sustained or permanent deviations. Affective bonds could be more threatening than sex. In that context, the book discusses the value to using the word “lesbian” rather than abandoning it as undefinable.
The legal record, in defining lesbian identity, avoids defining it via sex, even though sex is a constant specter. Further, defining lesbianism in terms of sexual activity first requires agreeing on what acts are categorized or understood as sexual. If sex is defined as PIV intercourse, then lesbians don’t have sex. Consider also that participation in specific sex acts is never required to categorize someone as heterosexual. Some historians have suggested using a cluster of practices, including genital, sex, emotional attachment, marriage avoidance, cross-dressing, and transgressing sexual norms. Any definition of lesbianism is inherently political.
With regard to the lesbian/trans-masculine question, this book is concerned with how the law treated individuals, without trying to sort out how they view themselves.
Silence around lesbianism can have many motivations, but by “silencing” the author means the “deliberate suppression of communication.” In particular, the suppression of a concept so that women do not have access to it, and specifically so that “respectable” women did not have access to it.
(There is a long discussion of silencing in a legal context.)
Part of the silencing included the displacement of lesbian possibilities onto the “other”: non-white, non-British, non-middle-class. The silencing was the opposite of “benign neglect” as rendering lesbianism unspeakable made defense against the accusation impossible. The author argues that the policy of silencing emerged in the 18th century, when sexual offenses moved from being the concern of the church to the concern of the court, and when prosecution shifted from concerning individual harm to general public harm. Reaching its apex in the 19th century, silencing has never entirely disappeared, though changed inform and focus.
Silencing has been one component of legal approaches to m/m sex (“unspeakable,” “sin not to be named,” etc.) but the primary tool in that context has been specific statutes and prosecutions. While m/m sex has been literally “policed”, f/f relations have largely been left to social control, in line with the control of women’s sexuality in general. Women are socially “policed” against crossing invisible lines on old manner of axes. Thus lesbianism need not be specified, except as one more transgression among the many. Women’s independence and agency were controlled in many ways that diminished lesbian possibilities without needing to name them. At the same time, the visibility of lesbianism in satire, classical text, medical, literature, and pornography did not contradict legal silencing as those media were socially restricted to a male audience.
The remainder of the introductory chapter contains a literature review, a discussion of primary sources (court and crime reporting), the methodology of the study, and a map of the contents of the book.
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